Conventional wisdom maintains that the pink economy, generally defined as the purchasing power of gay men and lesbians, only emerged from the era of Gay Liberation. And while an increasing variety of openly gay-oriented newspapers, magazines, clubs, and bars appeared throughout the 1970s and 1980s, it was not until the 1990s that terms like the ‘pink pound’, ‘pink dollar’, or ‘pink economy’ gained a foothold in marketing theory, criticism, and texts.

But the ‘discovery’ of the gay and lesbian market in the last few decades has in fact obscured a long history of dynamic relationships between business enterprise, (queer) consumers, and the ‘selling’ of queerness and homosexuality throughout the entire twentieth century.

Justin Bengry is Lecturer in Queer History at Goldsmiths, University of London.

He is an experienced historian, researcher and author of numerous publications in journals, edited collections and international newspapers. He has more than a decade of experience writing and speaking about gender & sexuality, social & cultural history, capitalism & consumer culture, media & travel.